From No-lo Vet Practice to Profits in 7 StepsSeptember 23, 2013Deciding to retire was a tough decision for Dr. George. He loved the profession. He loved his clients. He loved his patients. But it was time to say goodbye. So Dr. George hired a management company to appraise his practice. That’s when reality suddenly hit: His practice wasn’t worth much. Yet he was counting on it to retire. Dr. George had a no-lo practice! A no-lo practice, as defined by the veterinary consultants organization Vet Partners (www.VetPartners.org), is a practice with no value or low value. The management company sent Dr. George a consultant to help him turn his practice around. He agreed to share what he learned with VPN readers on condition that we not name him. Here are seven pearls to make your practice more efficient and profitable. 1. Control inventory. Inventory is an invisible, sneaky investment that sits on your shelves gathering dust. A smaller inventory means you will be able to move goods before they expire. If having fewer lotions and potions on your shelves makes you nervous, remember that most suppliers will ship products to you overnight—and at no charge. Here are a few of the problems identified: Automatic food orders were still being …
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Pet Insurance Usage Continues To RiseSeptember 10, 2013 Veterinarians and veterinary staff often come into to contact with clients who cannot afford to diagnose or treat their pets. Instead, these pet owners are faced with paying for a reduced level of care, if they can afford any at all, or the alternative of having to euthanize their pets. But there’s another, better, option, say those associated with the growing business of pet insurance. The problem is that many pet owners are not aware of the availability or affordability of pet insurance, which places the burden of informing those owners about pet insurance upon the professionals they encounter at the vet clinic. When veterinarians or their staff recommend pet insurance, not only are they helping the pet and owner by ensuring their financial preparation for incurring medical costs, they are helping their business as well. Evidence indicates that insured clients spend much more than non-insured clients and they tend to respond to an animal’s symptoms more quickly, according to experts. These reasons are probably why pet insurance continues to grow more popular. Pet insurance is estimated to be a $510 million a year industry, and …
When Should You Retire?September 10, 2013 I have been telling myself and others I was never going to retire. I truly believed I would just keep working until I faded into the sunset. I started to work for the veterinarian across the street from my home in Mitchellville, Iowa, when I was 11. My first job was to help a sow in dystocia by delivering four live pigs. It was great fun and I was hooked from that point on. I started to help with farm calls on Saturdays and after school and then full time during the summers. When I was in Veterinary School at Iowa State University the great practical experiences I had in junior and senior high helped me put context to most everything we were taught. The hands-on experience was invaluable during professional school. Early in my career I wanted to practice companion animal surgery in private practice, which I did with my mentor/partner from Iowa, Dr. Don E. Sceli, who had moved from Mitchellville to Phoenix and had started a companion animal practice. We practiced together for six years and started three practices. Eventually we sold the practice and I returned to Iowa State University to …
Callback Programs Can Generate $404,000 A YearSeptember 10, 2013 At Main Street Veterinary Hospital in Flower Mound, Texas, every technician and client-service representative calls four clients per day with overdue-patient reminders. Employees submit completed call sheets daily to a manager. Main Street Veterinary Hospital pays employees $5 for every overdue preventive care visit that gets completed. "Some staff earn $75 to $80 extra per paycheck, so it’s a big incentive,” says Practice Manager MaryBeth Soto, CVPM. If the hospital paid a $75 bonus, the employee would have booked 15 overdue preventive care exams. According to the 2013 AAHA Veterinary Fee Reference, 8th edition, the total for an adult canine preventive health visit is $208, while cat owners spend an average of $186.1 Based on industry norms that 60 percent of patients are dogs and 40 percent are cats, you’d have nine dog exams at $208 each and six cat exams at $186 each for a total of $2,988—a great return on a $75 investment. Talking to the Clients While callbacks can produce immediate revenue, the primary purpose is to be patient advocates. Remember, dogs and cats can’t answer phones, check email or drive to …
Adding Grooming To Your Practice: What Now?August 22, 2013 You have decided to add grooming to your veterinary practice; smart move! A grooming service can provide additional conveniences for your pet families, while also putting another set of eyes and hands on your patients to detect potential health problems. If you have seen the potential, the decision may have been easy. But integrating the new service may not be as easy without keeping some things in mind. The Groomer It's not easy to find a good groomer. Looking through the "help wanted" ads in veterinary journals and websites, it seems everyone is always looking for groomers. "The hardest part is finding that right person who will work with the veterinary practice team to become an extension of the services it can provide," says Tim Thompson, DVM, partner and Medical Institute Director for VitalPet, a Texas-based group of veterinary hospitals where the mission is, "Quality medicine in a caring family environment." In his practice, the current groomer grew up in that family, previously working as a receptionist, and was sent to grooming school to come back and fulfill that position. She was already part of the team. One way to make sure …
Explaining Finances With ConfidenceAugust 7, 2013 When Tyson, a 14-week-old pit bull puppy, was playing with another dog, he fell off the couch and fractured his leg. The pet owner had funds available on his MasterCard for the $1,000 surgery but didn’t want to max out his card. Maureen Lovett, front desk supervisor at Rutland Veterinary Clinic & Surgical Center in Rutland, Vt., explained financing through CareCredit. The client put $500 on his MasterCard and financed the balance. "About 25 percent of our clients need a little extra help beyond their credit cards,” Lovett says. Having access to financing was a win-win outcome for the client and clinic. In 2012, Rutland Veterinary Clinic’s clients financed $208,550 through CareCredit. The AAHA-accredited general practice with four veterinarians also offers emergency care and orthopedic surgery. Communicating When you communicate with confidence about finances, more clients will accept the level of care that their pets need. Here are the tips I offer when I coach teams on communicating about finances. Choose the right words. Say "treatment plan” instead of "estimate.” "Treatment plan” emphasizes needed medical care, while "estimate” is simply about money. Also update forms in …
Seven Reasons Why I’ll Never Offer Multi-pet Discounts … Or Any Discounts ReallyAugust 7, 2013 Pigs may fly before veterinarians will ever agree on this issue, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth discussing. After all, veterinary medicine is retail fare and discounts are the stuff of retail, so it only makes sense they might merit a mention in a column that relies on the politics of practice for monthly sustenance. But first a broad statement to kick off the festivities: I don’t now, don’t plan on, and probably won’t ever offer discounts to my clients for anything. Not for being my first or favorite clients, not for coming in on Tuesday mornings, not for having dentals done during the winter doldrums, not for bringing me Cuban coffee and guava pastries on a Saturday morning, not for bringing in more than one patient at a time, and especially not in recognition of the simple virtue of owning more than one pet at a time. Nope. Not a chance. Never. Though many of us may rely on discounting to bring clients in the door and I’d never begrudge anyone the right to seek or offer such concessions, I won’t lie and say I wouldn’t prefer that veterinarians who provide such niceties …
Tattoo Wars: Indelible Unprofessionalism Or Unfair Discrimination?July 26, 2013 I recently exceeded my friends’ and family’s expectations by crossing the 40-year mark with no ink on my person. In spite of a prolonged skate-punk phase, I’d somehow escaped this particular depravation of the flesh. But let me be clear: It’s not that I consider tattoos tacky, déclassé or ugly. My reticence is more to do with the assumption that the ink wouldn’t evolve as gracefully as the rest of me. (It’s long been my view that tattoos age less well than the skin it tints.) And what image would I care to live with forever, anyway? Alas, puerile image selection and sagging skin aren’t what most practice managers cite when they grumble over the recent scourge of tattoos within our ranks. "Professionalism” and "client perception” are the buzzwords most often bandied about in response to the budding enthusiasm for ink at all socioeconomic levels. Which can be problematic … and not simply because some people like tattoos and some don’t. Personal Preferences Though it’s true that personal style preferences are typically at the heart of this issue, that this trend’s limits seem strictly generational means those in charge are more likely to …
The Tortoise And The Hare—RevisitedJuly 26, 2013 Remember the classic story of the tortoise and the hare, told by Aesop in ancient Greece around 600 BC, and later by La Fontaine in France? Moral No. 1 The story by itself has many interpretations, but it seems like the most common one is that "slow and steady wins the race,” or perseverance typically leads to success. In other words, relative talent + exclusive focus = success. Focus is how you presumably went through vet school or tech school while your buddies were partying at the bar. The revised version of our fable relates that the hare, as skilled and "born to run” as he may have been, felt rather humiliated. He had failed because of hubris or overconfidence. So he asked the humble tortoise for a rematch. The tortoise, exhilarated and cocky, took him up on it. Of course, the hare learned from his mistake, and instead of "sitting under a tree for some time and relaxing before continuing the race,” he ran like he was chased by a starved wolf until he won the contest. So what’s the moral of this revised fable? Moral No. 2 Undivided talent + …
InterruptionsJuly 26, 2013 May I ask a personal question? Nobody has to know the answer. It will remain our little secret. Do you interrupt your clients? Do you wait until they completely answer question A before asking question B? If you’re not sure, you might want to focus on what happens during your next consultation. You could also pay attention to the way your colleagues and team members interact with clients. You might be surprised. While there is little information, to my knowledge, about what happens during veterinary consultations, physicians have studied that very topic. Three separate human studies show that physicians interrupt patients within 12, 18 or 23 seconds respectively*. It is quite likely that vets do the same thing. Dr. Beckman recorded 74 office visits with physicians in the 1980s. In only 23 percent of the visits was the patient able to finish his or her "opening statement of concerns” before being interrupted by the physician. The average time before the interruption was … 18 seconds! In 69 percent of the consultations, the physician interrupted the patient's statement and directed questions toward a specific problem. Quizzed by the researchers, the physicians believed …
